In February 2014, the Ukrainian people ousted pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, prompting Russia to invade and annex the Crimean peninsula. By the start of April, Pavel Durov had given his notice, with TechCrunch saying at the time that the CEO had resisted pressure to suppress pages criticizing the Russian government. Messages are not fully encrypted by default. That means the company could, in theory, access the content of the messages, or be forced to hand over the data at the request of a government. So, uh, whenever I hear about Telegram, it’s always in relation to something bad. What gives? The Security Service of Ukraine said in a tweet that it was able to effectively target Russian convoys near Kyiv because of messages sent to an official Telegram bot account called "STOP Russian War." "And that set off kind of a battle royale for control of the platform that Durov eventually lost," said Nathalie Maréchal of the Washington advocacy group Ranking Digital Rights.
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